In Digital World, Advertising Age Redesigns Print Publication

A WEEKLY trade publication covering Madison Avenue since the Hoover administration will soon introduce its most significant redesign in years, as part of efforts to further redirect its editorial focus in a digital world toward analysis from breaking news.

The publication, Advertising Age, owned by Crain Communications, made its debut in 1930 and grew to become the largest in its field. The redesign, scheduled for the Sept. 10 issue, will be comprehensive, affecting even the familiar oversize Ad Age format.

For decades, “everything we did was to get the big story in print,” he added. “Now, we break news around the clock online,” on adage.com.

Abbey Klaassen, editor of Advertising Age, agreed.

“Today, adage.com is our newspaper,” she said, evoking a slogan that had long appeared on the front cover, describing Advertising Age as “The international newspaper of marketing.”

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A prototype of the redesign of Advertising Age, which is scheduled for the Sept. 10 issue.

As a result, “we have to rethink what we’re offering in print,” Ms. Klaassen said, aiming for content that “is more considered, more thoughtful, goes deeper.”

As extensive as the makeover is, however, executives say they did not consider eliminating the print version and publishing only online.

“Not so far, anyway,” Mr. Crain said, adding with a laugh, “Ask me again in about 25 years.”

Allison P. Arden, vice president and publisher of Advertising Age, said: “Print still serves a very important role for our readers. That’s especially true for the senior executives and the marketers.”

Marketers have long been the mainstay of the publication’s circulation, which also includes readers who work for agencies and media companies. (A joke used to have it that the quintessential scoop for a reporter at Advertising Age — disclosure: this reporter worked there, for five years in the 1980s — was about a new cookie from Keebler.)

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The most noticeable change will be the size of Advertising Age, which is being pared from 10.44 inches by 14.5 inches to 10 inches by 13 inches. Those overseeing the redesign call it a “modern tabloid” shape. By comparison, the principal Advertising Age competitor, Adweek, owned by Prometheus Global Media, has been 9 inches by 10‡ inches since a redesign last year.

Each front cover of Advertising Age will get more of a magazine look, with large artwork promoting the cover article and headlines referring to other articles inside. Front covers now typically offer readers the first few paragraphs of three articles, all of which jump, or continue, inside.

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A recent copy of Advertising Age shows its current look.

On the inside, changes will include an end to jumping articles from the front to the back of each issue. And the editorial and op-ed pages, now named Viewpoint, will be moved to the back of each issue from the middle and be renamed Opinion.

The redesign has been tested with shadow, or prototype, issues, based on issues published in recent weeks. The initiative is being led by Athletics, a design and brand agency in Brooklyn, working with Ms. Klaassen and Jesper Goransson, art director of Advertising Age.

“Because it’s an 82-year-old brand, we wanted to re-envision it,” said Matt Owens, partner at Athletics with Jason Gnewikow. “The ‘aha’ moment was to change the size, then to reorganize it to be sequential, with no jumps.”

“The next big step was the visual language,” Mr. Owens said, changing it “to reflect the in-depth nature of Ad Age, and not be pulpy or bite-sized.”

“Like any rebranding, it will take time for it to be a well-oiled machine,” he added, “but Rance’s urge to reinvent at this time is admirable.”

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In April 2011, Prometheus Global Media, working with the design firm Pentagram, made major changes to the print edition of Adweek as it combined Adweek with two sibling trade publications, Brandweek and Mediaweek.

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What Advertising Age looked like in 1985.

“We redesigned with the notion the industry was going through this transformation,” said James Cooper, executive editor of Adweek, “and a traditional business-to-business publication needed to be retooled.”

“Print is for larger pieces, analysis; it’s hard to break news in a weekly,” he added. “But you can break news on the Web site or on Twitter, so they all inform each other.”

For a publisher to make “the luxury of having a magazine” work, “you have to take the entire week and put it together in a ‘digest-ful’ way that’s visually appealing,” Mr. Cooper said, “a great read that’s not homework-y or tedious.”

Mr. Cooper wished his counterparts at Advertising Age the “best of luck” in their endeavors because, he said, “putting out a weekly print product in this age is a complicated endeavor.”

That was underscored in October, when Mr. Cooper assumed the duties of Michael Wolff, editorial director of Adweek, who left after barely a year in that post. Under Mr. Wolff, Adweek played up coverage of popular culture and media and played down its traditional coverage of Madison Avenue account and people moves.

“My mission has been to stitch back some of that nuts-and-bolts coverage, an important part of our heritage that we had gotten away from,” Mr. Cooper said.

Although it may seem that Advertising Age and Adweek are following each other closely as they redefine their print editions, there is a reminder of the zigzag nature of their rivalry. The redesign of Advertising Age will make it smaller, but the redesign of Adweek made it larger; before April 2011 it was 8‹ inches by 10‡ inches.

A version of this article appears in print on August 27, 2012, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Ad Age Redesigns in a Drive for Deeper Content. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe